Who can forget cheerful Scotsman and avid diver Howard Wood? Since winning the Prize in 2015 for establishing Scotland’s first community-developed Marine Protected Area, Wood has been hard at work with the Community of Arran Seabed Trust (COAST) educating and inspiring the next generation of Arran to protect their most treasured resource: the sea. Ahead of the 100-year anniversary of the U.S. National Park Service,…
Ahead of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples next week, Program Officer Myriah remembers her first meeting with land rights pioneer Edward Loure. In the rangelands of Northern Tanzania, she experienced first-hand how this remarkable activist is empowering the country’s traditional communities to manage their land: “Ore engulukoni aang naa engishui yang.” Edward closed his Goldman Environmental Prize…
Before he received the Prize earlier this year, we spoke to Leng Ouch to learn about what inspired him to fight for the protection of over 200,000 acres of pristine forest in one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be an environmental defender: Where did you grow up? I was born in…
Our Program Officer Lindsey Freedman looks back on her first meeting with 2016 Goldman Prize winner Leng Ouch at the end of 2015, and again on an official visit in early 2016: Our paths crossed quite by chance in November 2015. I had spent the summer planning a three-week vacation to Cambodia and Myanmar with no way…
It’s not hard to imagine why Kim Wasserman (2013, United States) was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 2016 Waterkeeper Alliance Conference earlier this month. Since her victory shutting down two coal power plants in Chicago’s south side, she continues to defend her community’s right to a clean environment — including water. For almost 20 years she has been…
Last week’s Global Witness report On Dangerous Ground opens with the following statement: The environment is emerging as a new battleground for human rights. Alarming Numbers The report, fittingly dedicated to Berta Cáceres (2015, Honduras) covers the state of land and environmental defenders in 2015 and is not short of harrowing evidence to support this statement:…
Before winning the Goldman Environmental Prize in April, we spoke to Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera to discover what it took to protect the 30-mile Northeast Ecological Corridor in Puerto Rico from two proposed mega-resorts. Rivera Herrera’s almost 20 year-long campaign is a testament to the power of perseverance in the face of government corruption, and efforts to discredit his…
When we first met with 2016 Goldman Prize winner Luis Jorge Rivera Herrera earlier this year, we didn’t know that his award would coincide almost to the day with composer, lyricist, and performer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s awarding of the Pulitzer Prize. So we thought we’d compare — in a very fair and scientific way — these two…
A few months before winning the Goldman Environmental Prize in April, we spoke to Máxima Acuña and her attorney and head of the NGO Grufides Mirtha Vásquez, to learn more about Máxima’s life as a farmer, and the challenges she’s facing while standing up to Yanacocha Mining Company (a joint venture of the Peruvian Buenaventura…
Program Officer Ryan Mack looks back at his first meeting with Goldman Prize winner Máxima Acuña in the northern Peruvian highlands of Cajamarca in early 2016. They are photographed above standing in front of the pristine Laguna Azul: Thick fog crawled along the hillsides of Cajamarca’s highlands, engulfing Laguna Azul and the surrounding mountains. The wind picked up, rustling…